Cebon, David | Engineering Papers

NASA NTRS2012

Materials Selection for Aerospace Systems

A systematic design-oriented, five-step approach to material selection is described: 1) establishing design requirements, 2) material screening, 3) ranking, 4) researching specific candidates and 5) applying specific cultural constraints to the selection process. At the core of this approach is the definition performance indices (i.e., particular combinations of material properties that embody the performance of a given component) in conjunction with material property charts. These material selection charts, which plot one property against another, are introduced and shown to provide a powerful graphical environment wherein one can apply and analyze quantitative selection criteria, such as those captured in performance indices, and make trade-offs between conflicting objectives. Finding a material with a high value of these indices maximizes the performance of the component. Two specific examples pertaining to aerospace (engine blades and pressure vessels) are examined, both at room temperature and elevated temperature (where time-dependent effects are important) to demonstrate the methodology. The discussion then turns to engineered/hybrid materials and how these can be effectively tailored to fill in holes in the material property space, so as to enable innovation and increases in performance as compared to monolithic materials. Finally, a brief discussion is presented on managing the data needed for materials selection, including collection, analysis, deployment, and maintenance issues.

Arnold, Steven M.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Effective Materials Property Information Management for the 21st Century

This paper discusses key principles for the development of materials property information management software systems. There are growing needs for automated materials information management in various organizations. In part these are fueled by the demands for higher efficiency in material testing, product design and engineering analysis. But equally important, organizations are being driven by the need for consistency, quality and traceability of data, as well as control of access to sensitive information such as proprietary data. Further, the use of increasingly sophisticated nonlinear, anisotropic and multi-scale engineering analyses requires both processing of large volumes of test data for development of constitutive models and complex materials data input for Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) software. And finally, the globalization of economy often generates great needs for sharing a single "gold source" of materials information between members of global engineering teams in extended supply chains. Fortunately, material property management systems have kept pace with the growing user demands and evolved to versatile data management systems that can be customized to specific user needs. The more sophisticated of these provide facilities for: (i) data management functions such as access, version, and quality controls; (ii) a wide range of data import, export and analysis capabilities; (iii) data "pedigree" traceability mechanisms; (iv) data searching, reporting and viewing tools; and (v) access to the information via a wide range of interfaces. In this paper the important requirements for advanced material data management systems, future challenges and opportunities such as automated error checking, data quality characterization, identification of gaps in datasets, as well as functionalities and business models to fuel database growth and maintenance are discussed.

Ren, Weiju↗